Yesterday was my last bike race of the season - the Colorado State CX Championships. Mentally, I was done with my season a couple weeks ago, but I decided to drag it out a couple weeks and race states since I was doing reasonably well. The body was willing, but finding the motivation to ride in the recent cold snap was difficult.
As much as I wanted to stay sitting in the nice warm car, I got out and raced. This was just not a good course for me. The temperature was dropping, and any hope of mud was rapidly freezing away. With some tricky descents and off-camber snowy slopes, it was more technical than I was ready for. Mental note for next year - do more skills work later in the season.
I got a decent start, and went into the first corner in the top 10 or 15. That put us on to a pretty tricky section, and I lost some spots as I was being tentative. I also dropped my chain. First time of the season amazingly.
I could see the leaders pulling away. Always a disappointing sight. Within a lap or so, I settled in with a group of 3 and I was content to follow them all the way to the end. We swapped positions occasionally, but I mostly just tried to sit on them and not set the tempo. My lack of motivation towards racing was really showing. :)
Eventually, one of that group had a mechanical and that just left two of us. I took a nice spill on the off-camber snow, but caught back up. I really wasn't working all that hard surprisingly, and I should have just attacked. In the end, I finished just behind that kid for 8th place overall.
Just for fun, I looked up the ages of the people in front of me. Everybody in front of me was younger (22, 22, 26, 23, 29, 14). So, I'm first place in the 30+ crowd. :)
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The off season starts...now
My cylcocross season is officially over. More on that later.
I had hoped to sleep in this morning, but I woke up at 5AM. WTF? Totally annoying. So I just laid on the couch and watched some TV until Christine got up (at a more reasonable hour).
The weather forecast I looked at Saturday night was spectacularly wrong. It said something about some "light" snow, but I woke up to a whole lot more than that. Awesome! Christine and I put on some boots and snow pants and took Kuzca to the park to run around. We had her running back and forth all over the place and she was loving it.
Before the rest of the city got up and about, we decided to run to the store to get ingredients for baking later in the day. Driving in the snow is especially fun when the roads aren't clogged with people and I had some fun getting the Subaru sideways. We spent the rest of the day at home, mostly cooking. We made some ginger snaps, and some mini pumpkie-pie like things with a ginger crust. The verdict is in - we love our new mixer.
I've been a glutton today, and it's been great. Pancakes, bratwurst, a couple beers, some egg nog, cookies... Welcome to the off season. I must say, though, I would have loved to have been racing my bike around in this snow.
I had hoped to sleep in this morning, but I woke up at 5AM. WTF? Totally annoying. So I just laid on the couch and watched some TV until Christine got up (at a more reasonable hour).
The weather forecast I looked at Saturday night was spectacularly wrong. It said something about some "light" snow, but I woke up to a whole lot more than that. Awesome! Christine and I put on some boots and snow pants and took Kuzca to the park to run around. We had her running back and forth all over the place and she was loving it.
Before the rest of the city got up and about, we decided to run to the store to get ingredients for baking later in the day. Driving in the snow is especially fun when the roads aren't clogged with people and I had some fun getting the Subaru sideways. We spent the rest of the day at home, mostly cooking. We made some ginger snaps, and some mini pumpkie-pie like things with a ginger crust. The verdict is in - we love our new mixer.
I've been a glutton today, and it's been great. Pancakes, bratwurst, a couple beers, some egg nog, cookies... Welcome to the off season. I must say, though, I would have loved to have been racing my bike around in this snow.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Choices
Life is full of choices. Sometimes you choose the lesser of two evils, and sometimes you choose the greater of two goods. This choice falls into the latter category.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Green Mountain Sports 'Cross
The cyclocross season is winding down. Last Sunday it was back to Golden for the final race in the Green Mountain Sports series. It was at the same location as my first race of the season where I decided to really take it easy. This time I wanted to go full gas.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Why go to the Grand Canyon
I just read this in a blog post about some people who ran a double crossing of the Grand Canyon in one day (South Rim to North Rim and back to the South Rim again):
View along Eminence Break hike.
I don’t want to go around telling anybody how to live their lives; heck, I usually don’t know what’s coming next in my own.
But.
If you haven’t.
Go to the Grand Canyon.
Writing the reasons to see it are like trying to capture the canyon in a photo.
Go and you’ll understand.
That sums it better than I ever could.
View along Eminence Break hike.
I don’t want to go around telling anybody how to live their lives; heck, I usually don’t know what’s coming next in my own.
But.
If you haven’t.
Go to the Grand Canyon.
Writing the reasons to see it are like trying to capture the canyon in a photo.
Go and you’ll understand.
That sums it better than I ever could.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Austin
I flew down to visit Christine at the "winter home" in Austin for the first time since spring. I've decided that I can't travel to Texas June-August, or else I'll melt. The trip turned into a good excuse for us to eat and drink our way around town and we started Thursday night with some wine and junk food (high class funnel cake and bread pudding) at Max's Wine Dive.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Alpha Cross
Another weekend, another race. Today's special: Alpha Cross in Brighton.
My legs were missing some snap today. Don't know why, they were just kind of dead. I had to hope to outlast people instead of attacking them. My second row call-up was quickly killed when there was a lot of pushing and shoving at the start. I was a little bit unprepared to deal with it, but this was more than the usual elbow and shoulder bumping. This was "I'm going to put my skewer in you spokes" kind of action. After nearly going down on the gravely start, I ended up near the back of the group. Ugh. Lot of spots to make up throughout the race.
The course was not exactly my favorite. With the exception of one bumpy grass section, the entire course was on dirt. It seemed like more of a short track MTB course than a cross course. Not only was there a lot of dirt, but it was rutted up, construction traffic tread bumpy. Adding to the fun were several switchbacks. It was like they needed to add time to the course so they just kept adding switchbacks. I don't have a problem with switchbacks as a technical element, but 10 (there were at least that many) is a bit much.
It seemed like there were always people around me, which is nice. It's way more fun that way, rather than racing alone. On the last lap there were a couple people in front of me and a charging pack behind me. One of the riders in front of me took a water bottle in an unusual spot and it was easy to cruise around him. I managed to hold of the rest and finish 14th.
Not my best performance, but Christine put it all in perspective for me. She reminded me that I used to be happy with top 20. So yeah, 14th out of 50 is decent. I can deal with that.
My legs were missing some snap today. Don't know why, they were just kind of dead. I had to hope to outlast people instead of attacking them. My second row call-up was quickly killed when there was a lot of pushing and shoving at the start. I was a little bit unprepared to deal with it, but this was more than the usual elbow and shoulder bumping. This was "I'm going to put my skewer in you spokes" kind of action. After nearly going down on the gravely start, I ended up near the back of the group. Ugh. Lot of spots to make up throughout the race.
The course was not exactly my favorite. With the exception of one bumpy grass section, the entire course was on dirt. It seemed like more of a short track MTB course than a cross course. Not only was there a lot of dirt, but it was rutted up, construction traffic tread bumpy. Adding to the fun were several switchbacks. It was like they needed to add time to the course so they just kept adding switchbacks. I don't have a problem with switchbacks as a technical element, but 10 (there were at least that many) is a bit much.
It seemed like there were always people around me, which is nice. It's way more fun that way, rather than racing alone. On the last lap there were a couple people in front of me and a charging pack behind me. One of the riders in front of me took a water bottle in an unusual spot and it was easy to cruise around him. I managed to hold of the rest and finish 14th.
Not my best performance, but Christine put it all in perspective for me. She reminded me that I used to be happy with top 20. So yeah, 14th out of 50 is decent. I can deal with that.
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